The effect of microfinance on rural women empowerment in Kikuyu constituency, Kiambu county in Kenya

Abstract

Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) provide its members with various services to help improve their entrepreneurial ventures and in the end empowering them. Despite many studies carried on the topic, the effect of microfinance intervention on the empowerment of women entrepreneurs in rural constituencies remains largely unexplored in Kenya. This study sought to close the gap by establishing the effect of Micro Finance on rural women empowerment in Kikuyu Constituency, Kiambu County in Kenya. The study adopted a descriptive research design with the population consisting of all women groups in Kikuyu Constituency, Kiambu County in Kenya. The sample of the study consisted of the 80 active women groups. Primary data was gathered using structured questionnaire for analysis which was done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 19) to generate the descriptive statistics and also to generate the trends results and regression findings. Findings on the analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicate that the overall model was statistically significant as indicated by an F statistic of 4.863 and p value less than 0.04608 . The regression analysis revealed that micro credit to be statistically significant with micro training and micro saving with significance of more than 5% to be not statistically significant. This study provides recommendations clear financial management strategies should be set aside to address key critical financial difficulties facing women particularly developing good financial management technique to provide adequate responses to challenges and problems by focusing on women business processes to minimize claims and enable women growth and women empowerment and have clear framework to advice women on how financial management decisions are made and the procedure to be followed to make sure the right decisions are made to meet the benefit of the customers and maintain their visibility. This will enable to minimize any conflict of interest which might ruin their image and reputation. Nevertheless, w omen should focus on planning issues to improve their effectiveness and efficiency. Operating activities which involves receivables, payments and savings should be well management to ensure efficiency and effectiveness to maintain steady cash flows to finance groups operating long term projects and goals